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Hey everybody, in this episode, let's talk about questions that you can ask when you are networking with lawyers on the search to your first career. Let's talk about it.

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Welcome to Law School Decoded, the podcast that pulls back the curtain on what it's really like to succeed in law school. Let's get started.

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So I'm doing all these podcast episodes about how you can network your way to your job that you want out of law school and to a legal career, to that first job that you're going to have on your resume that you're going to use to launch the professional phase of your life as a lawyer. And if you're networking, especially for the first time, you might wonder, what do I talk to these people about? I don't know what to do when I ask a lawyer for a meeting, or I ask a legal professional for a meeting, and I go sit down in front of them and I'm looking them in the eye, and I've got coffee that's hyping me all up, and I need to talk to them about something. What should I ask them? What should I ask? Well, I'm going to give you a few tips on that in this podcast episode that you can use to guide yourself in those networking meetings. So the first thing that you should do is make sure that you understand everything you can about the lawyer's practice area before you go into the meetings. So, how can you do that? If they have an online biography, you can go read it. If they have a job title, you can go read about what that job is. So if they're a prosecutor or a public defender, you can read about what they are doing as best you can. You can listen to podcasts about that practice area. You can go read blog posts about that practice area. Look to see if they have their name as the author on any blog posts. You can read news articles about that practice area. Do everything you can to try to get an understanding going into the meeting of what it is these people are doing. What kind of disputes are they addressing? What kind of transactions are they managing? Learn everything you can before that meeting. Understand though, you might be wrong about what they do. Like you might look at a law firm's website and you look at a lawyer's biography and you're like, aha, this person does these types of class action cases that I'm interested in. And then you might go sit down with that person and you ask about that. And they're like, well, yeah, I don't do actually too many of those. Why might that be? Well, it might be that that biography is a bit of an ad. They want people to call them about that type of class action case. But they might tell you actually, like 75% of my day is these individualized lawsuits that I handled on an individual basis, not class actions. But I do class actions from time to time when they come in. It is the kind of work I want to make sure people know that I know how to do and that I want to get. But most of my day is actually something a little bit different than what I am putting online. Like when someone is a litigator in civil lawsuits, like tort suits or commercial suits, a lot of what they're going to spend their time on is the discovery phase of the case. They're going to be spending their time exchanging information with the other side, gathering documents from their client, getting documents produced by the other side, looking at computer data, looking at emails, looking at text messages, other types of communications, looking at information from software as a service applications that they gather and that they produce. Maybe the case involves Instagram posts, maybe it involves highly technical architectural data. They are spending their time looking at that and analyzing that. They're spending their time taking depositions, defending depositions, and reading transcripts or summaries of depositions. Well, you're not going to put that on your law firm bio because it's really not the most interesting part of the case, right? So it's not something that you necessarily need to advertise to the outside world. So understand that what is in their bio might be slightly different than what it is they're actually handling day to day. They may cite cases in their bio that they were actually involved in in some way. You can look at those to get a sense of the kind of disputes that these people might be handling or the kind of transactions that they may be working on based on the press releases that you see in their biography. So learn as much as you can before the meeting about the person individually, professionally, and what they're doing based on what you've seen online. And then, second, everything you can about their particular practice area, whether it's their involvement in it or not. Again, blog posts written by other law firms or other offices or businesses may be helpful to learn a little bit more about what this person is dealing with on a day-to-day basis. So you're going to learn as much as you can before the meeting. If you want, it might help you to write down some questions before the meeting based on what you are reading. Like, hey, I saw a reference online to you managing this kind of dispute. What does that involve? Like, what exactly do you have to do? How long does that take? What are the complications? What are the parts that are satisfying? What are the parts that are not satisfying? You may want a few specific things to ask about, or just asking generally about the practice area with a little bit more specificity. You may want to write those questions down in advance, but I would suggest to you, you don't want to rely on a script or outline or that written-down list of questions when you go into the meeting. You just want to have a genuine, natural conversation. And so to do that, when you are meeting with people, I would suggest to you that you should remember the six questions that exist in the English language. Who, what, when, where, why, how. And how does that dynamic work? What is it like doing that? Does that ever get difficult working on those teams? How do you make it effective? So ask who? Ask what they do. And that's probably the first one you can ask. What do you do day to day? Just what does the job involve day to day when you wake up? They might say, every day I am in court and I am arguing the same kind of motions and I am doing the same kind of trials every single week. And of course, there's there's a lot of twists and turns in those processes, but I'm a really trial-heavy practice and really heavy when it comes to evidentiary hearings, or maybe I'm doing administrative hearings and I'm doing them every week. So that's what I do from week to week to week. They might say that. They might say that they are never in court and that every day really varies. Some days maybe they're doing litigation, maybe they're doing that discovery work, maybe they're taking depositions, maybe they're in a big trial. But the next day they're advising clients. Clients are saying, hey, we don't have a dispute yet, but we do have this problem and we want a lawyer's opinion on it. Can you give us that? Well, then you might ask the lawyer if they say that they do both of those things, how much percentage of time do you spend on both? Is there one that you enjoy more or the other? Do some lawyers focus on just one or the other? How much time do you spend talking to clients versus working on things outside of those meetings to prepare for them? How do you work on teams to do that, or do you just do it yourself? How do you get that done? What does your day look like in terms of the first thing you do after you clock in in the morning to the last thing you do before you clock out? Are you ever called to handle emergencies? Are you handling matters that come up and need immediate attention right away? Or is the work more slow burning? Is it stuff that takes longer for you to work on and you're working on it more over the long term? Are there emergency hearings or not? Are the cases big in terms of exposure or small? You can ask all those kinds of things about what lawyers do to get a better idea of what their day-to-day looks like. And when you're asking the what question, really with lawyers, they only do three things. They read, they read case law, they read summaries of things, they read facts, they investigate, they write, they might write briefs, they might write transaction documents, and they have conversations. So you can ask them, what kind of discussions are you having day to day? Is a lot of it talking with clients about their problems and responding on the fly? Is a lot of it reading cases or regulatory guidance to better respond to their problems? Is a lot of it writing? Are you writing briefs or not? And how does that change throughout your career? You know, in my career, when I started out as a litigator, I started out writing a lot of briefs, reading and writing. I was reading case law and writing briefs related to lawsuits that I was working on with other people as a junior attorney. And as more time went on, I did less writing. I did less reading because junior attorneys were doing that. And I was just editing the work. It actually turned out I didn't enjoy that as much. I missed that writing and reading portion. So I moved my practice in a different direction eventually. But you can ask, are you writing anymore? Are you reading anymore? Because if that's what you're really going to enjoy about the law, then that might matter to you. Or they might say, no, I don't do any of that. Yeah, I have to write a brief every now and then, but I'm just going to court and arguing. We aren't really a brief heavy practice. The trial judges don't have clerks in our jurisdiction. They don't have time to read briefs. So it's really about just what you go in and present to the court. You might like that. You might be like, yeah, that's me. I don't like writing at all. I don't like reading these cases. I want to just go in and advocate. The facts matter and I want to argue them. So maybe that's what you want to do. Maybe you want to write transaction documents or disclosures to agencies like the SEC, whatever it might be. You can ask them, what are you reading and writing every day? And how much time are you spending doing that? Are clients asking to hop on a call a lot? Or are you just getting projects and getting back to them once a quarter about the status? It really can vary. And so you can ask them who, what, when, where, why, to get a better sense of how much time and what does it look like for them to spend time reading, writing, and discussing things, having conversations in the course of their roles? You can ask those questions. You can ask, why do you like doing what you do? Why? So who, what, why? Why do you like this practice area? Why don't you like it? What are the more frustrating parts of it? And how do you deal with that? How do you still enjoy the practice despite that, or do you enjoy it? Some lawyers might tell you, I'm not happy where I'm at. I am myself networking because I am looking to make a shift. If that's the case, that might be telling you. Now, it doesn't mean you need to run away from that practice area. You personally might enjoy it more. You might be the right person for it. They might tell you the things that they hate about it, and you say, oh my gosh, I would love to do that. How are you giving that up? Well, guess what? Maybe they'll leave their job and recommend you for it. You never know. So ask them, what is it that you don't like about it? What do you like about it? What are the most challenging moments? Why are they challenging? Why are they hard? Look, if you're a lawyer, you're getting paid to solve problems. And a lot of those problems are hard. That's why some lawyers are paid quite well. Some lawyers solve hard problems and they aren't paid what they deserve. But in any event, when you are a lawyer, you have a license to solve hard problems, and that's what you're going to be asked to do. So ask why are the problems challenging? What makes them challenging? And for example, when people ask me that, I say, you know, the hardest part isn't the law. Like I can go spend a ton of time understanding even hard aspects of the law at this part in my career. The hard part for me is understanding what the facts are. On your law school exam, your professor writes the facts for you, right? That's the hard part though when you're in practice is determining what the facts are. To determine what the facts are, I need to talk to multiple people. I need to get multiple perspectives. I need to understand what people are going to say about what the facts are. And then I need to look at documents. I need to look at communications. And only then do I have the full picture. If I just talk to one person, I'm only getting one side of the story. And often there are multiple sides of the story that I need to get. And so that's something that I consider when I am going through this process of managing matters in my practice. So that's what I would say. If you ask me what's the hardest part about the practice, it's determining the facts because I can't advise on risks if I don't know the facts. And if I don't know the facts, I may advise wrong. I may say this looks like the path that would be prudent to take in this situation. But then I find out more facts later and I'm like, oh, I wish I had known that earlier. That's not a good place to be in. I want to find out the facts early so I can advise my client well. So learning the facts can be quite difficult and is something that we as lawyers spend a lot of time doing. Learning the facts. That's what I would say. But again, different lawyers will say different things depending on who you're talking to and what they do. They might say the opposing parties are the most difficult part. Look, they're playing chess, they're making moves, they are posturing their case. And that's stressful. That's hard. I'm constantly responding to what they are doing. And that can be really difficult. Or they can be really difficult personalities. They're trying to pressure my client, and I have to deal with that. And you can ask them, how do you deal with that? How do you manage that? How do you manage that stress potentially? Those are questions that you can ask. Who, what, when. So when is about timing. How long do your cases last if you're a litigator? Do they last two weeks? Are they small cases? Are there a ton of them? Or are you just handling a few? Some lawyers may only handle a few class actions at a time. Other lawyers may handle 150 personal injury cases at a time. It totally varies, and it may vary over time. Some cases are bigger than others within practice areas, but different lawyers have different approaches to how many cases they handle. So that's something that you can learn for them when is about timing. How long are you spend spending working on them? When do the cases go to trial? When do you write motions? When are you writing to the court? Are you writing motions to dismiss? Are you writing summary judgment motions? Different lawyers will have different answers to that. And that might affect whether you like the practice area or not. Some lawyers might say, yeah, we never do motions to dismiss because we would always lose them, because it's easy for the other side to plead a case. Other lawyers might say, yeah, people try to bring creative cases all the time that don't really have any legal backing and don't have a recognized cause of action, and they aren't able to make the allegations needed to satisfy the elements that are required for recognized causes of action. So we file motions to dismiss all the time. Other people might tell you we file summary judgment motions all the time. We often find that the evidence doesn't add up to a claim in a light most favorable to the non-moving party after we go through discovery. So we file summary judgment motions all the time. Other lawyers might say that we don't file those motions because we're going to lose. We know that there's a dispute. For example, I'm doing slip and fall cases, and the plaintiff says they slipped and fell. It's admissible evidence. We may have contradictory evidence, but look, in a summary judgment motion, you got to take that plaintiff's evidence as true. And so as the defendant, I'm not going to file a summary judgment motion because I know it's a waste of time, because I know that I would lose. And instead, what needs to happen is I need to focus my client's resources and my time on preparing the case to win at trial, to get the jury or judge to accept my client's versions of events as the truth and to advocate for them in court. So that might be their answer. It's going to depend. But you can ask them, how does the timing of that work? When are you filing those motions? What motions are you filing? Who are you working with? When are you doing these things? How are you doing them? How? Are you working with a team or by yourself? Are you working late? Are you having conversations to get it done? Are you spending hours and hours writing? You know, an appellate lawyer might spend hours and hours writing days on end and never have meetings. Their how doesn't involve conferring with other people. It involves preparing things to be submitted to an appellate court. Whereas the how for a trial lawyer might be a ton of conversations, or a transactional lawyer might be a ton of conversations. I need to talk to people to really understand the deal and the purpose behind it. I need to talk to people to get their case ready for trial or get their defense ready for trial. And that takes conversations. So the how is important. Do you go some periods where you don't have very much work and then some periods where you're super busy and billing a lot of hours? That is a how. So you can ask lawyers those questions in order to understand their practice area better. And so when you are going to those networking meetings, do your research, prep, try to learn as much as you can so that you have somewhat of an idea as best you can about what the answers to those questions are, so that you have a genuine interest in what this lawyer does and you can show that through some specific questions about specific topics. Hey, I saw this legal issue, it seems to be big in your area. It seems that you do consumer class actions. A big issue is whether those cases get compelled to arbitration or not. I've I've seen a lot of articles about that. Is that something you're dealing with? Because that'd be super interesting to me to fight that in court and to brief that. What does that look like? How long does that take? It looks like it takes six months for courts to decide those. Wow, do you have evidentiary hearings on it or is it on paper? Tell me, tell me how that works. Do you work on teams? Do you have to work with clients a lot to get information and evidence, or is it mostly just reading cases and presenting legal arguments? How does that work? So try to get all that information and then try to go into the meeting prepared with it. But again, remember that you may be wrong about everything. You may get misled by what you see online or misapply it, and that's okay. Default to a normal conversation by going to your genuine questions. And by the way, what I'm encouraging you to do is to talk about what? The other person. To talk about the lawyer, get them talking about themselves, get them talking about their practice. You can also ask them questions to get them to know them a bit personally, especially if the connection is going well. If they're asking about you personally, feel free to ask them. What do you like people to know about you professionally? Or do you have family here? Do you have friends? Why do you live here? Did you have you always lived here or did you move here? Some basic questions. And then once they start sharing, you can ask more detailed ones. You obviously don't want to ask maybe very detailed personal questions up front. That's just not appropriate, but ease your way into it as you get to know them just as you would any other friend. This just happens to be a professional friend. So get to know them. The more you connect with them, the more they feel you have gotten to know them, the more you are likely to be helped by them, the more they are likely to potentially remember you down the road. I'll do another podcast on questions you can ask and things you can say when you follow up with these lawyers, because that's going to be critical. I'm going to do a whole nother episode on it because it really is a different topic. But in that initial meeting is what I'm talking about here, or other follow-up meetings you might have, those are the kind of things that you should ask to get to know them better. And it is about getting to know them. It's not about telling them who you are. This is something you need to remember. A lot of people out there really like talking about themselves, their experiences, who they are. I tell you, I meet a lot of people for work and I meet a lot of people professionally. And I find that people really enjoy talking about themselves. That isn't the most effective way to professionally network with someone. And I think in a lot of professional contexts is the wrong approach. I like asking questions to people. I like getting to know them. I like helping them get to answers kind of socratically by asking, what do you think if we do this? What do you think? What do you think the options are? I'm having trouble. Let's talk through it together. That is more effective than saying, well, I, I, I. I've experienced this, I've done this before. Of course you're going to say things like that a little bit, but it shouldn't be necessarily the focus of a two-way street conversation. If you simply talk and talk and talk and talk and talk about yourself, yourself, yourself, and you don't let the other person ask you questions, they're going to be sitting there like, okay, when can I leave? I am so done with this conversation. I don't want to hear about all this. The fact is that it's only going to be interesting for so long. There is a bit of a time clock. So of course you're going to talk about yourself, and that's fine. That's what you should do. But it's within reason. You want to talk about yourself only to the extent necessary to build that personal connection foundation. You want to spend most of your time learning about the other person. Be curious. Be curious about what their life is like professionally so that you can use that to build the foundation of your network. You are going to use that network to find not just a job but a career. You're going to use that network to leverage people who care about you at the right time to get your way there. You're going to ask these people for favors once you get to know them a little bit. You're going to ask these people for job opportunities once you get to know them a little bit. It is not going to happen in that first meeting. In that first meeting, you are going to ask these questions. You're going to get to know them. And then you're going to follow up. You don't need many of these connections in order to be successful. You only need a few, but they need to be genuine and you need to ask the right questions to get to know them on a human level. So if you sit there and you're like, I don't know what to talk to these people about because I have no idea what they do every day. I hope I've inspired you and given you some ideas about how to formulate those questions because you can do it. It is achievable. So enjoy the process of networking. Have fun meeting these people who you are going to network with. I hope that this podcast was informative. We will see you next time.

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That's it for today's episode of Law School Decoded. Visit us online at Lawschooldecoded.com and make sure to subscribe. Until next time, keep decoding the law, one step at a time.